Lev Lafayette's journal

Have returned from Sydney where I spent the last few days at the eResearch Australasia 2009 conference, a well attended gathering with almost five hundred of the country's senior IT/research managers present, although the suffix -asia is a bit of a misnomer. The conference was held opposite Manly Beach a site which is most quintessentially Australian and reminds me of Midnight Oil's Power and the Passion (original video clip available on YouTube). I wonder if Minister Garrett remembers saying "it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees ... sometimes you've got to take the hardest line?"). First day of the conference was spent at the annual ARCS all-hands meeting which could have been improved with earlier and more complete reporting from management on operational and strategic activities.

My paper, Social Networking and Weblog Sites for Researchers apparently went quite well; standing room only and people being very attentive and furiously writing notes during the presentation. I argued several points; that reducing the cost of replicated research is worth billions to the Australian economy, knowledge is proximal and networked, for researchers networking and 'blogging tools need to be combined (e.g., Livejournal/Dreamwidth), content moderation and public exposure is required, that content networks are more important than social networks (Flickr rather than Facebook) and that provision must be made to automatically assign researchers to content groups they require. The next step after this is convincing my managers that this is worth throwing some money at.

Microsoft attempted to make a big splash at the conference with the release "The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery", a collection of some twenty extended abstracts of scientific research involving high quantities of data and using MS tools. The claim that there even is a fourth paradigm (science via empiricism, then theory, then simulation, then data) receives some significant criticism in the scholary communications chapter from Clifford Lynch and John Wilbanks, the former arguing that the third paradigm is far from complete and the latter arguing that this in no way represents a paradigm in the sense of Thomas Kuhn. To think I had to read almost the entire book to find these remarks. Whilst the research is vaguely interesting, the theoretical grounding of the text is very weak.

As part of our ever-increasing menagerie, caseopaya and I acquired an eastern-long necked turtle (chelodina longicollis) who comes with the name "Issac Yetrle" ("Issac" being the previous owner's name from Issac Newton and "Yertle" being from, of course, the famous Dr. Seuss book).



ARCS took its Melbourne staff out to Ginza Teppanyaki on Tuesday. The food production show itself was impressive, but when they started lobbing food and plates around it started to get a bit boorish. The FAQ I wrote for Access Grid is now part of official documentation. Excellent article distinguishing cloud and grid computing.

I am obsessing slightly over the upcoming public transport forum. With a member of parliament, an economist, the secretary of the PTUA and the secretary of the railway division of the union as key speakers the scope of this gathering is not be under-estimated. Further, it is likely to the launch of a wider alliance of activity, especially given the impending upcoming contract. This is perhaps one of the most important opportunity for individuals to help shape this agenda.

Significant changes recently in S and E Asia; North Korea has ended the fifty-seven year peace-fire on the peninsula; South Korea and U.S. forces move to def con 2. Reihana Mohideen provides a fair summary on why the LTTE lost the civil war in Sri Lanka; overlooks that they used a conventional army system and utilised a terrorist strategy - a recipe for failure.

Spoke on Wednesday night at the St. Kilda branch of the ALP; primary emphasis of my presentation was on socialisation of land rents and how their private collection contributed significantly to the global financial crisis. Also speaking on the night was Dr. Nicholas Gruen of Lateral Economics who was advocating a state-owned Internet banking service for transactions and for superannuation. On Sunday I gave an address at the Melbourne Unitarian Church entitled "Sympathy for the Devil", where gave an outline of this poor misrepresented spirit, discussed some contemporary organisations that claim some allegiance and concluded that trumping prosaic versions of moral judgment with supernatural versions and excuses ("the devil made me do it"), should be utterly abandoned. Sunday week I'll be giving part II of the "Philosophy of Economics" study with an emphasis on positive economics. A few days beforehand will be the forum on public transport; should it be returned to public management? should it be free?

Last week the Federal budget was announced; ARCS received a massive increase of funding; some $97 million over the four financial years 2009-2013, whereas previously we had $22 million; this is truly awesome especially given the modest number of staff we have (did they read my preceding journal post?). On the other half of my working world, my installation of a CUDA instance of NAMD has seen some excellent results (plus I found a bug). Attempts to install Desmond have been less successful. Have conducted another review of our training course and in my own studies for the Cert IV in Workplace Training and Assesment picked up two more High Distinctions.

On Thursday night finished off our Dragon Warriors campaign with an explosive conclusion; on Sunday ran the first session of GURPS Krononauts which involved an intervention in the time of the fall of the Aztec Empire, a fascinating and tragic period of history. In the HeroQuest pbem, the Crimson Bat has been destroyed by a Rubble Runner with a Dwarven grenade. Now accepting articles for the fourth edition of RPG Review which will include interviews with Dennis Sustare and (apparently) Ken St. Andre!